Paula Hepburn, profile and works

Drone culture: Dexterous Vs Dangerous

With drones quickly transforming from a military piece of equipment, a cheap and easily accessible toy you see rooming around the park, one thing to be certain, they have become a regular part of society. With the price range from approximately £49.00 to a whole heap of military cash near enough anyone can bag themselves a handy little Gopro and a reasonably new aspect to filming. Now I know what you’re thinking, new? This isn’t exactly the beginning of aerial filming techniques, which I appreciate, but it is the beginning of a whole new style of filming widely available to the general public. A community of unrestricted skateboarding, sports loving, animal watching, journalistic, perspective film makers. That trick, the arrangement, that comparison; now drones bring a new dimension to the amateur film maker and oh how we love it.

I was once walking along the side of Buckingham Palace gardens on my way to London Victoria when I spotted drone above the large exterior walls scouting the garden. One can assume this is a common practise by security to guard the palace from potential trespassers, which I’m sure is a difficult task. But this made me think, would this done need a camera facing upwards as well a downward to determine another drone isn’t following the security one? And who actually stated it belonged to the Palace itself?

There are no such drone Laws in place in the UK as of yet, but with the CAA (Civil Aviation Authority) struggling to control and identify a breach of privacy via platforms such as vine and YouTube, the boundaries will inevitably be pushed to breaking point. There are rules regulations around recreational drone manufacturing, with weight and height restrictions and with general social security laws one must adhere to the basic UK privacy laws. But as reported By Charles Arthur of The Guardian newspaper online (2nd, April, 2014), a man was convicted of dangerous use of a recreations drone that lost control near a nuclear marine facility.

Like most technical advances, such as social media, android phones, and droning one must take advantage of a progression creatively pushing the boundaries to new ‘heights’, and always be aware of that metaphorical wall of privacy.